In the wake of the tragic school shooting in Bangkok, the pointless online feud between Thais and Cambodians rears its ugly head. I don't know who benefits from this except for cynical politicians in both countries, trying to take people's mind away from their problems.

When I first moved to China in 2008, you only had to go through a security scan to get to the square's central area, and that took perhaps one minute. How things have changed... (shared from @manyapan.bsky.social's Twitter).

Apart from everything else I could say about this hogwash (no jaywalking in China?), the sight of a far-left politician going on about how cheap stuff is in China without the slightest self-awareness is really something to behold. Galloway truly represents the worst of the Western left.

But but I had been assured that China has perfect infrastructure. That they're already living in 2050.

Why do I imagine some of the American students lending themselves to this are among the ones who would scream "cultural appropriation" at anyone doing something similar in the US? x.com/ChineseEmbin...

I'm in Phetchaburi for the weekend. It's a really nice little provincial capital, the nicest one I've been to in Thailand so far. Quiet, non-touristy, and yet it has stuff to see and nice places to eat, and it's pleasant to walk around.

This series of Thai cookery books needs a new name...

A notorious apologists engages in more of the "come and see with your own eyes" rhetoric, this time about Xinjiang. Truth is, if you don't speak Chinese or a local Turkic language and don't know much about the situation, visiting as a tourist will not help you understand anything much.

Bangkok is voting for its new governor today. As is customary, this has meant that the sale of alcohol has been banned in the whole city from 6 pm yesterday until 6 pm today. Here are a couple of the electoral posters in my neighbourhood.

How can you possibly say the Chinese system is secretive and impenetrable when they are doing their best to spread a book by Xi Jinping whose entire point is to be spread as propaganda? The usual silly arguments from this paid propagandist.

Over on the hellsite, this American leftist has definitely won the "stupidest post of the day" award. Thankfully he's being ratioed.

Lol the tankies have decided they're backing Prabowo. I wonder how Indonesian leftists must feel about this.

One nice thing is that there are electric scooters you can rent by scanning a QR code everywhere. It only cost me 2 yuan to ride one for ten minutes.

The city has a large salty lake, sometimes called "China's Dead Sea". Apparently you can float on the water without even trying, because it's so salty. I wouldn't know though, because unlike in the actual Dead Sea, you aren't allowed to swim. Seems a bit of a waste.

I'm in Yuncheng, Shanxi province. Provincial Chinese cities of this kind look much more orderly and prosperous than they used to. I find there's still very little to do though, and the historical sites are of course completely rebuilt.

Aaaand.... after a week of lovely weather, Beijing's air pollution is back.

After the weekend's rain, Beijing's air has finally cleared up. Here's a photo taken just now, and one taken on Friday for contrast. It's like a veil has been cleared from my eyes.

Group of Twitter personalities and China apologists meet up for a beer in Beijing. Serbian Nik Stankovic, a fellow apologist who also lives in Beijing but wasn't invited, points out that there were no women among them, and promptly gets told to "fuck off back to Central Europe" by the organizer.

Sorry to bang on about this, but the air quality here continues to be pretty terrible. At least in the old days they made sure the skies were blue for important visits by foreign leaders, but apparently not this time. I've just bought my first N95 mask in over three years.

After almost a week in Beijing, I've finally found a robot. It was in a convenience store, and it's purpose seems to have been to surveil the customers.

It's not that this stuff isn't real, but it isn't representative of life in China. I've been in Beijing five days this time around, and I haven't seen any robots making coffee. But foreign influencers and journalists just can't resist making videos like this, including even Fox News.

This went down very, very poorly.

I went to an EU-organised event in Beijing on EU-China trade yesterday. The audience was surprisingly optimistic when polled on the state of trade relations, but the debate was quite heated, revealing fundamental differences and underlying resentments.

This is Beijing this morning. Whenever you mention air pollution here, everyone seems genuinely surprised: "but we've solved it. It's not longer a problem". Sorry, but no. Even Bangkok only gets like this in January, the most polluted month of the year.

They seem to have built a whole new temple from scratch on Beijing's Gulou Dongdajie. The plaque outside says the temple was "restored" (often code for "rebuilt") in 2005. But I'm pretty sure that temple wasn't there when I left Beijing three years ago.

An assistant professor of law at the University of Massachusetts writes this ridiculous caricature of the China Studies field, in completely ungrammatical English, and gets over 1k likes. Amazing stuff.

Truly revolting antisemitic post by one of the most well-known internet tankies out there. At least these people are showing who they truly are.

Also interesting to see the 1644 史观 cropping up in the comments. The century of humiliation has now become three centuries of humiliation.

"Nationalism is bad, except for China where it's good, because China's awesome." The worship of China by young American leftists is really something to behold.